Download Squad

I didn't think it was possible to fall out of the ugly tree and actually hit every branch on the way down. I thought that was just a figure of speech. One of those idiomatic expressions we use to describe something without really describing it. The Solutions Network proved I have a thing or two to learn about metaphors.

Imagine a site so jumbled with affiliate links, so riddled with primary colors, so overbearing in its use of tables -- filling every last inch of visible space with something you could click on, NOW! -- that any pretense of goodwill towards your fellow man you've ever held evaporates like so much dew from the top layer of a landfill in the morning sun.

It's a trainwreck of html, a prank played entirely in font tags. It simply must be.

The only thing the designer failed to use is BLINK. I'm going to guess that failure was either an intentional oversight -- one tiny concession to good taste in a sea of disgust -- or that he was so overwhelmed by the site himself that he fell dead at the keyboard before adding that one last cardinal sin of bad web design.

But wait, there's more. Immediately after your browser loads the last site you'll ever want to visit, a voice comes booming from your speakers, proclaiming that you've reached "the busiest site on the internet!" The irony is nearly enough to kill a man.

The cherry on top? Even the favicon is animated. I'm not even sure how you'd go about animating a favicon. You know why I'm not sure? Because, even without seeing an example of an animated favicon, my brain attempts to suck my own eyeballs deep within the recesses of my skull upon the very mention -- a physiological response I can only imagine was developed through generations of evolutionary genius as a last-ditch defense mechanism to prevent serious brain damage from spreading among the population.

If The Solutions Network is your personal key to making money on the internets, I highly reccomend that you begin scouting for a sturdy cardboard box in which to live at your earliest opportunity.

[Thanks Andrew for the tip. My shrink will be sending you the bill for my next 3 visits]

Mozilla's Ubiquity dazzlingly cool preview release promises to make commands a great deal easier to remember and use by removing those annoying hyphens. With a totally updated parser -- unimaginatively referred to as "Parser 2" Ubiquity also promises support for a ton of new languages.

"[The old parser] was based on a lot of assumptions about English that are not necessarily true in other languages", explains the preview release announcement. Spaces between words, or noun-verb ordering are more flexible under the new parser, opening Ubiquity to a non-English speaking audience and getting rid of those picky little hyphens for Anglophones.

Unfortunately, that also means a great many commands you might be used to are currently incompatible. The new version greeted me with a warning, notifying me that some commands -- known in Ubiquity parlance as "verbs" -- didn't load because of incompatibility with Parser 2. A quick look shows old verbs like "flip-page" and "desaturate-image" are in need of an upgrade.

Still, for fans of Ubiquity's slick hands-never-leave-the-keyboard workflow, this is an upgrade that's been a long time coming.

Bozeman, Montana -- a city just 5 miles to the east of freakin' nowhere -- as part of a more thorough set of background checks, is asking job applicants to, "list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."

Federal law states that you can't ask about religion or marital status when interviewing you for a job, but both of those things are conveniently available in most Facebook profiles. Added to which, giving a prospective employer all your logins and passwords gives them access to direct and private messages, and in the case of most social networks, indirect access to the information of other people who never granted the city access. The whole thing violates just about every social network's Terms of Service, and just generally feels slimy.

In an interview with local news, the city's attorney says it isn't "trying to find out all kinds of information about the person that we're not able to use or shouldn't use in the hiring process."

Current job listings for Bozeman include a Water/Sewer technician so, presumably, with a high school diploma and a clean Facebook record, you could get hired to dig around in something that smells almost as bad as this hiring policy.

[via BoingBoing]

Intego, a "leading internet security and privacy software" publisher dropped a press release on my inbox this morning that might as well have read, "Hey, Apple.. Gotcha!"

Beyond recognizing the malware threat to Macs, Apple goes further, admitting that the techniques it includes in Mac OS X aren't enough to fully protect Macs from viruses and malware. The company provides security advice, as Intego has said for many years, saying, "since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, antivirus software may offer additional protection." (emphasis Intego's)

Complete with footnotes, Intego uses the feature list for Apple's upcoming OSX 10.6 release to essentially say, "There, we told you so! Apple put thought into securing its operating system therefore it must be vulnerable!"

How does an enumeration of security features imply a susceptibility to malware? That's like calling GM to the carpet for agreeing that a car parked in a locked garage is more protected than one parked on the street. The very concept of a garage offers additional protection, it however doesn't imply that the protection is actually necessary.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I expect too much from a company who sent out a press release about Conflicker which read in part, "This worm, which affects Windows computers, has no effect on Mac OS X; at least not yet. Intego's Virus Monitoring Center is on full alert in case a Mac OS X variant of this worm should appear"

Wait, is this thing going to magically change from a worm written directly to the vulnerabilities of Windows into some shape shifting super worm that defies the all the reality of modern computing, as well as all common sense and logic? Does anyone else picture Intego's "Virus Monitoring Center" as some overweight bald guy trolling Slashdot while eating Cheetos?

My advice? Save your money for magic beans. And, if the nagging voice inside your head absolutely won't be quiet until you buy quasi-useful anti-virus software for your Mac, don't buy it from Intego.

Intego were contacted for comment, but failed to respond prior to publication

Subversion is arguably the world's most popular source control system, and many a developer's best friend. It keeps things organized, it helps you gracefully recover from your mistakes, and it makes managing branches and versions of your projects dead simple. What isn't always dead simple is setting up or managing the Subversion repository. Sure, the software is free but, your developer's time definitely isn't. If you've delegated the hassles of managing your source control to one of your senior developers, you're likely making a crucial mistake that is costing you money.

Beanstalk takes the burden of setting up and maintaining Subversion out of the equation. For $15 a month and up -- or free for a tiny project not needing per-commit backups -- Beanstalk gives you Subversion as well as integration with Twitter, Basecamp, Campfire, and more. Use any Subversion client you want! Cooler still, if you're using Beanstalk's SVN to manage a website, they've made it super simple to set up FTP deployment on commit, so every time you commit a change it can go live on your domain.

For cost to hassle ratio, I personally have to say spending $15 bucks a month for someone else to worry about keeping my Subversion server running and backed up might be the best $15 I've ever spent.